Sabre's BTS To Debut In Canada, United Kingdom
<H1> Sabre's BTS To Debut In Canada, United Kingdom</H1>By Cheryl Rosen
<I>Montreal </I>- Sabre Business Travel Solutions is going global. Last week it signed a major Canadian partner to co-market its automated booking system, and completed development of a version aimed at the U.K. market, its first target in Europe.
Following its pattern of distributing BTS only through the travel agency channel, Sabre inked a non-exclusive alliance with the $500 million-air-volume Rider Travel Group and its sister company, Necho Systems Corp., developer of the Navigator expense reporting system (<I>BTN</I>, March 18).
Rider is Canada's third-largest travel agency, behind American Express and Carlson Wagonlit; Paul Rogers, its director of continuous improvement, said Rider is the largest purchaser of corporate travel north of the U.S. border.
Inking Partnerships
The Navigator system, released in May 1995 (and not to be confused with the TravelNet booking product of the same name), is currently in use by 10 customers in Canada and six in the United States, and has an additional 50 "hot prospects" now that the corporate market is getting serious about end-to-end travel solutions, Rogers said.
Sabre also is talking partnerships with major Canadian corporate customers, and plans to install BTS at several sites before the end of the year, according to BTS vice president and general manager Sam Gilliland. It also is seeking additional Canadian agencies that service the corporate market to help distribute the new system.
The Canadian version of BTS will offer British spelling-as in "traveller," for example, rather than the American "traveler"-and such other minor modifications as distances expressed in kilometers rather than miles. A French-language version will be available in about six months. Beyond that, little change was necessary to make BTS a North American product rather than a U.S. one, Gilliland said.
Pricing in Canada will be equivalent to that in the United States, with transaction-based fees starting at rack rates of $7.50 per transaction.
Europe Infrastructure In Place
The technology infrastructure in Europe does not seem not to be an impediment to online systems, Gilliland noted: Networking capabilities on the Continent are "probably ahead of the United States, and the profile of travelers in terms of their access to desktop and laptop computers is fairly similar at global corporations," he said.
Gilliland acknowledged that in Europe, where Sabre is a small and foreign-owned player, selling BTS will be more of a challenge than at home, where it is buoyed by its market advantage as the leading CRS, and carries the clout of American Airlines parent AMR Corp. That's why Sabre chose the United Kingdom, where Sabre's market share is significant, Gilliland said. But he also noted that part of the promise of BTS lies in the expectation that it will draw new customers into the Sabre fold.
BTS also is "getting lots of interest" from the Asia-Pacific market, and Gilliland said "it is probably reasonable" to assume BTS will hit the market there before the end of 1997.
Meanwhile, in Sabre's first-ever public offering last Friday, AMR brought 16 percent of the company's shares to Wall Street. About 20 million shares of Sabre stock hit the market at an opening price of $27 a share. The New York Stock Exchange offering is being led by Goldman Sachs.
At Rider Travel, Rogers anticipates that perhaps 20 percent of his corporate customers will be interested in BTS over the next six months, as the recent domestic commission cap in Canada moves that market to fee-based arrangements like those becoming prevalent in the United States.
Rider's goal in partnering with Sabre is to offer a seamless integration of its expense product with BTS-which Rogers called "a complete and elegant product"-although it also will work on the similar integration of other booking systems down the road.